Back in the Saddle

The Writer’s Midwife was on vacation on the beautiful west coast of Canada in the beginning of July. Vancouver welcomed our adventurous spirits and truthfully, I didn’t get any writing done. I didn’t even send a newsletter to you fine writers on the other parts of the globe. What I did do was take in all of the vast scenery, ate a ton of organic, locally grown produce and hugged a great tree or two in Stanley Park. I was living poetry last week. This week with the full moon fuelling me, it’s time to get back down to business.

Steven Pressfield’s wisdom (The War of Art) about resistance and writing is on my mind as I struggle to get back to work on things. My resistance took me to Chapters the other night, where I purchased two books on creativity and two blank journals that caught my eye. All in the hopes that it will motivate me to write…and I can justify not writing if I am reading books about writing, right? Wrong. What have I done instead? I have grabbed myself an accountability partner. If you don’t know what an accountability partner is, it is someone you know who will keep you accountable and on track with your goals. My accountability partner has asked me to submit ten poems to her by the end of August. That scares me and it’s great!

So instead of reading all of the wisdom on creativity in the hopes of getting my pen moving, the pen is coming first. I will not open a fun book to read on creativity until I have written X amount of words or filled up X amount of pages with a 12-point font.

So if you find yourself on vacation, enjoy it! But make sure you return to that blank page as soon as you’re back in the saddle (as we say in Calgary during Stampede time).